When they cut the internet,
the truth still gets out.

Authoritarian regimes routinely cut the internet to hide what they're doing. Venezuela, Iran, Myanmar, Belarus, Ethiopia, Cuba — when protests start or elections are stolen, the connection goes dark and the world stops hearing from the people inside.

But the country is never completely dark. Somewhere in the mesh there's always a journalist with a satellite phone, a diplomat behind embassy Wi-Fi, a relative with Starlink, a hacker on a VPN over a foreign SIM. Breakout's job is to find that one gap. You snap a photo of what's happening on your block, hand it off to your neighbour's phone over Bluetooth, and it leapfrogs from device to device through the city until it lands on someone with a working uplink — who, without lifting a finger, broadcasts your signed evidence to the open internet on Nostr.

The regime can cut the cables, but they can't cut the people. As long as one phone in the chain has an exit, the truth gets out.

There isn't one — and that's the point. Breakout lives inside the existing Bitchat chat input. To escape something, type the slash command directly into the text box:

• /escape your message here — signs and releases a text note to the mesh
• /escape caption + tap the image icon — to attach a photo (caption optional)

If autocomplete is on, you'll see /escape listed alongside /join, /msg, and the other Bitchat commands. The system will reply "escape event signed and released to mesh" when it's away.

Bitchat already moves messages between phones over Bluetooth — beautifully. But until now, anything you said inside a blackout stayed inside the blackout. There was no bridge to the open internet.

Breakout adds that bridge. The new /escape command lets any signed Nostr event — text or photo — ride Bitchat's existing mesh until it reaches a peer with connectivity, who then publishes it to Nostr relays for the whole world to see. Same mesh, same UI, same protocol — just one extra command that turns Bitchat into an escape route.

Meshtastic is great — but it needs extra hardware. You have to buy a LoRa radio, charge it, carry it, and configure it. Breakout runs on the phone in your pocket. No radios, no antennas, no extra device — just an Android install and the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi every smartphone already has.

No. Just an Android phone. BLE and Wi-Fi are built into every modern smartphone. No LoRa radios, no antennas, no configuration.

Images are supported in the current build — capture a photo and Breakout signs, chunks, and pushes it into the mesh. Video sharing and bringing your existing Nostr identity (login with your npub) are next on the roadmap.

We designed traffic to blend in — randomized MAC addresses, no distinctive beacon signatures. But no tool is perfect. Read our threat model before using in high-risk situations.

It's published to Nostr relays — decentralized, globally replicated, not controlled by any single entity. You get a signed receipt back through the mesh confirming it's out.

Yes. The full source is on GitLab. We welcome security researchers to audit it — especially before relying on it in hostile environments.